‘Our findings indicate scarcity changes the way people visually perceive another person’s race – and this perceptual distortion can contribute to disparities.’

How they gonna be mad at us just because THEY don’t have a job???

In the first experiment, participants were shown pictures of faces which varied along a continuum from black to white, before being asked to state whether the face in the image was black or white.

Individuals who held strong beliefs that white people suffer financially when black people make economic gains were more likely to perceive mixed-race faces as black, than individuals without such beliefs.

In the second experiment, the concept of economic scarcity was unconsciously introduced with subliminal messages like ‘scarce’, ‘sparse’ and ‘limited’. The scientists found that more people were likely to perceive mixed-race face images as black than when economic scarcity was not introduced.

Krosch said: ‘People typically assume what they see is an accurate representation of the world so if their initial perceptions of race are actually distorted by economic factors people may not even realise the potential for bias.’

Those who more strongly believed in resource competition between both racial types had a lower threshold for identifying mixed-race faces as black, than did subjects who did not hold these views.

People under financial strain generated images of faces with darker skin and stronger ‘Afrocentric’ features than people without tight budgets, in the third experiment.

And in the final test, participants allocated less money to faces that were perceived as ‘more black’ when money was scarce.

According to the study, which is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, ‘the results suggest that economic scarcity may alter individuals’ visual perception of black Americans, likely eliciting increased discrimination and that this process may worsen socioeconomic disparities.’

This “study” sounds like a buncha bullisht to us, but what do you think? Could there be some merit to what NYU is suggesting?